Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Ice

The thing with them and me is that we have something in common. Although they’re no longer like real human beings, nevertheless they once were, and therefore it’s possible to understand the signs and warnings they set out. So you can move securely when you use your common sense and watch out for the things they’re constantly showing you, in pictures, sort of, or inarticulate sounds. They wake you up, make you lift your chin from where it was buried in your fur collar, and look. They’ve opened a passage somewhere and send you an echo to prick up your ears. You can make your way through great dangers with the help of such signs.

If you’re not receptive to them, you have to cross the ice all alone in the world. Many make it a long way, because the world is not malicious, just heedless. For the world, you’re nothing, but human intelligence can bring us safely through great trials. Horses that are taken out onto the seal ice and tear themselves loose, they often manage to make it home as well, though they show their teeth and lay back their ears in pure terror when the ice creaks under them and they set out across green ice. So I say only that it’s a help to know about those who surround you when you trot along like a dot on the ice and who keep an eye on you when you stop to rest on a skerry. If you leave bread and butter for them they may even shift the wind behind you. That has happened to me many times.

When the ice has set, it lies like a floor between the islands. The incessant wind sweeps away the snow, and skates and kicksleds come to life in the boathouses. The pastor too digs out a rusty sledge, replaces a couple of dowels on the chair and screws on the handlebars. With a whetstone he removes the worst of the rust from the runners. The rig is adequate, and soon enough he’s kicking his way like a comet across the water world. He gets to the villages so easily and completes his errands so quickly that Mona hardly has time to notice that he’s gone before he’s already back. The kicksled also serves as a family vehicle. Now all three of them can go to meetings and gatherings. The pastor figures that Mona will sit with Sanna in her lap while he kicks the sledge along, but Mona is very eager to drive the sledge herself. It’s hard to get started, but once it’s going the sledge sails along in splendid form. Sanna shrieks with delight because of the speed and because she gets to sit in Papa’s lap with his arms tight around her. Then they switch, for when they’re visible from the village windows, it looks better if he’s pushing. On the way home, he kicks more gently while Mona sits with the sleeping Sanna on her lap. The ice is bright from the moon and stars, the islands dark as rain clouds in the rippling light.

The ice is seldom this good, and many are out to try their luck. There is a lot of visiting between villages and there are barn dances on Saturday nights. Everyone is out and about, and darkness doesn’t slow them down. There is a party at the parsonage, too. They’ve had friends on the Örlands since their first day here, there are many to thank for help and advice in word and deed, and it is always a pleasure to see their happy, friendly faces. The organist and Francine, the verger and Signe, Adele Bergman and Elis, and Lydia and Arthur Manström. They always have much to talk about, and with father Leonard in the house, there is competition for the floor. The pastor notes with a certain satisfaction that here he has found, if not his superiors, at least his equals. The talk is as lively as he could possibly wish, and the faces are happy and full of goodwill and interest.

With the extra leaf added, the table has space for all of them. The tea water is singing in the kettle, the china service is for twelve, and Mona’s bread, butter, and rolls are worth travelling many miles for. The oil lamp swings gently in the air above their heads, the tile stove spreads warmth. There is a cold draught around their legs, but everyone has had the sense to dress warmly. The door to the bedroom stands ajar, and before Sanna falls asleep she hears Papa’s happy, dark voice, Mama’s bright laughter, Grandpa’s amazement, and the Örlanders’ happiest party voices.

They talk about the ice, the winter weather, the newspapers that now come only once a week, if that, and about those who believe they’re isolated out here whereas in fact they’ve seldom had such a merry time. The Örlands might well be called the Society Islands in this blessed condition. Oops. They can’t help themselves, they all look at the pastor’s wife, who stares into her teacup, the pastor smiles a little, and for a moment, no one says anything. Then they talk about the way consumer goods are becoming more available and actually beginning to show signs of a peacetime economy, about the situation down in Europe and the terrible poverty and want in the German ports that seamen from the Örlands have reported. About the enormous need for aid everywhere, about the Americans who are starting to get their aid shipments organized, although Finland isn’t allowed to receive anything by order of the Soviet Control Commission in Helsingfors—may it soon return to its Communist paradise! In any case, all this applies only to official aid, because private efforts and family initiatives are getting America packages all the way out to the Örlands.

“Although it makes you wonder who they think we are,” says Adele Bergman. “It’s nice to get good soap, but I don’t understand why they send those funny little toys that toddlers stick up their noses and the older kids trample to pieces. And those terribly tight-fitting little skirts and blouses—who could possibly wear such things at work? Of course the girls grab them and make themselves look a perfect fright and think they’re so modern, but is that what they call aid? We have our own flour and grain and sugar, and anyway it’s better for the national economy to buy those things in a store!”

The pastor has an almost irresistible desire to say “Amen” when Adele Bergman has finished. Everything she says is true and right. She is an uncommonly competent woman who ought to be in the government and help build up what the war has pulled down. But hard-boiled as she is when it comes to the economy, she also has a tender heart and a thirst for what she calls a genuine faith. It is for her sake he says grace before Mona serves the tea, and he knows that she is passionately interested in the parochial issues they will unfailingly get into before the evening is over. Arthur Manström is always uncharacteristically quiet during those conversations, and the pastor suspects he is a free-thinker but likes coming to the parsonage for the sake of the intellectual stimulation. Lydia and Adele on the other hand are members of the vestry, as is the organist, and the verger has a fund of practical experience and incontestable knowledge of the customs of the parish. And he if anyone knows how terribly capricious, not to say malicious, the church’s boiler can be. How many nights he has come plodding through the snow to keep it going. The congregation comes tramping in to warmth and light the next morning as if it were the simplest thing in the world, not suspecting that it has all been touch and go.

Yes, truly, life out here is full of drama, and now Arthur Manström sees a golden opportunity and grabs it. Hypnotized, everyone but Lydia listens to his stories from the First World War when he had a radio hidden in the attic of the east village school and maintained contact with the Swedish Free Corps, on its way across the ice to Åland. The Russians showed up again and again, and Lydia thought more than once that they’d been found out, especially the last time when they went up into the attic with some kind of device that could pinpoint the source of radio waves. But the wise and well-behaved little radio held its breath while Lydia played “Quake Not in Terror, Little Band” on the harmonium in the schoolroom below and led her pupils in loud and measured song. The Russians came back down the stairs, apologized for the disturbance, the officer saluted, and they marched away. Chaos up in the attic, but the receiver was untouched behind a panel in the wall.